The real estate business is a dynamic market. To lead a team of successful real estate agents, you must empower them to grow and achieve more on their own. Here are five tried and true methods for increasing productivity and truly motivating your team members in today’s competitive and evolving real estate market.
1. Goal Setting
By stressing the importance of goal setting with your team, and allowing them to create the action plans, you empower them to own their goals. Effective goal setting is extremely important for laying the foundation for the success of your agents as individuals and for your team as a whole.
This is an exercise that can be done by individual agents or as a team.
Identify, clear, concise SMART goals and know your WHY for each of them.
– Specific
– Measurable
– Attainable
– Realistic
– Timeframe
A study conducted by Dominican University provide that writing down one’s goals and creating action plans – and further, going public with them – did, in fact, significantly improve achievement.
2. Time Management Skills
Time management is a constant struggle with real estate agents because they feel they are always “on the clock”. Teach your team the value of time management and allow them the flexibility to schedule out their own tasks.
Why use these tips? First, to keep them sane during busy times – we all tend to stress out when schedules are packed. But second, and just as important, to empower them to make time for what they think is most important.
Time Blocked Schedule
Scheduling out their day assures they can remember to do everything, but also gives them ample time to get it done. Schedule absolutely everything: lunch, gym, meetings, responding to emails, phone calls, etc. Tackle the most pressing issues first.
Disconnect
It’s pretty hard to concentrate with a phone and computer buzzing constantly. Encourage your team to turn off notifications so they can focus solely on the task at hand.
Simplify & Delegate
Simplify their schedule by assigning fewer tasks and allowing them to focus on what’s most important. This will greatly increase the efficiency of important tasks, while decreasing the time they need to work. If there are tasks that can be delegated, empower your team to pass them along to co-workers who have more bandwidth.
3. Continuous Education & Training
Encourage your agents to continue to grow and learn for the duration of their career. In the world of real estate, the competition is stiff. Being a successful real estate agent or broker not only relies on customer relationships and the ability to close sales, but also on a continuing education concerning developing trends or advancements in the field. From a client perspective, education and training can make the difference between hiring a prospective agent candidate or simply moving on to the next available option.
Whether or not continuing education (CE) is required in your state, staying current on trends of the real estate profession is an excellent way to distinguish your team’s skills with potential clients. Check out these real estate training programs designed to educate and train real estate agents.
4. Consistency
Consistency is important in any business, but especially so in real estate. Your team must stay on top of their marketing efforts, whether they are up in sales or down. You never know when someone will be ready to sell their house and you want your team to be ready to capture them via a print mailer, your website listings, blog, social media, etc. Stay on top of your brand awareness campaigns so that your team is the first they think about when making the decision to buy or sell.
5. Lead By Example
Leading by example could be the single most important way to empower your agents to achieve more. Leading is all about influence. How you present yourself in a leadership role affects your ability to successfully leverage authority and motivate others.
If you are doing all the recommendations in this blog post for your own business, and coaching your team, they will be inspired by your drive for success. If you think your team needs more, let’s talk about real estate coaching programs that would be more beneficial to you and your team.